


you can be the boss

by corleones



Category: Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-09-20
Updated: 2012-09-20
Packaged: 2017-11-14 16:55:07
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 972
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/517470
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/corleones/pseuds/corleones
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>She works for HBO now, which he hears through the grapevine, through some secretary of his or a colleague and most definitely not because he was googling her at work.</p>
            </blockquote>





	you can be the boss

She works for HBO now, which he hears through the grapevine, through some secretary of his or a colleague and most definitely not because he was googling her at work, finger tapping out her name like second nature, almost as quickly as they type out his own.

There is a photograph on a Perez of her having brunch with Paul Rudd. It says _Mysterious Brunette snags Nineties Hearthrob_ which Jack thinks is a bit harsh, harsh on her not on Paul - you think she'd have gained enough notoriety in this town to be more than a _mysterious brunette._

He deletes his browser history, straightens his tie, moves on. 

-

They meet at press parties, at premières, lots of fancy cocktail parties where Jordan is wearing little dresses that have no back or longer, sweeping pieces that hug her curves. She leaves lipstick on the mouths of glasses, laughs and shakes his hand. They circle each other like acquaintances or strangers newly introduced and Jack finds himself shifting his weight from one foot to the other, uncomfortable. 

She's always alone, always twisting that ring around her finger but there's no man, no Tripp who is always expecting to turn up at her elbow, just Jordan and a cocktail and a laughing mouth set in red.

The first time, he puts his hand on the small of her back and she whispers in his ear "you missed me, Rudolph?"

He never said no. He never said yes.

-

Her apartment is not far from his, and the bars they like to frequent are even closer something he only realizes when they start sleeping together.

It happens, not after a party or at a party (in a closet, like he has pictured it over and over, taking her by the wrist and dragging her into one of those muffled spaces where they hang up furs, kissing her till she stops laughing and her legs wrap around his waist). It happens instead, in his office, on a Sunday: she is having coffee in the neighbourhood and he is picking up the paper.

She asks if she can come up, "old time's sake," sits on her smirk and when they go in, she perches herself on his desk and takes her skirt off, spreads her legs across the cool glass table top and pulls him forward by his tie.

Jordan, he thinks, is still the strangest women he's ever going to know. Her wedding ring bites into the back of his neck as they fuck and he rubs the spot afterwards, sore and probably a little red. 

She is still _that_ woman, the one who likes to live like this, behind the lights, the darkness, the heat, who likes him to press her into the corners of either of their lives (no bedrooms, no hotels, always improper corners of work, work, work).

When they met, he was the married one and now, it's her.

"You know, Jack," she says, as she does up the buttons on her blouse, "I'm glad we got to patch things up. No hard feelings, you know." She grins. "Even though you fired me."

"You fuck every boss that every fired you?" He has his hands on his waist, one eyebrow raised. It feels strange now when they talk, if they talk at all. There is still a bit of formality left over, the hard words, the curt mouths.

She kisses his cheek on the way out. 

"You're the first."

-

He's got a spotless decision making record, wives and one night stands aside but Jordan McDeere sticks out of it all, a bad mistake all the way. Hiring her was a mistake, firing her was a mistake, having an affair with her ten months after he fired her off his network was perhaps the worst mistake of all.

He misses her in the office now, in ways he doesn't like to admit (he is not a sentimental man). He remembers when she would come into his office with bright spots of anger in her cheek, how his eye would follow the lines of her stockings, calf muscles tense as she paced in front of his desk, like a lioness on the rampage. How always, always her face would be calm, _composed_ \- only the collection of these other things giving her away.

Of course, now the visits are less frequent and generally end with her heels up on his shoulders and her hips trembling under his hands so he guesses there is some progress in change after all.

-

"I don't think marriage is for me," she declares. This a few years later, two, maybe three. Danny Tripp left her or maybe it was the other way around but either way, she lives alone now and has a divorce lawyer again. 

"You sure about that?"

"I don't like being married an awful lot," she admits, swallowing the rest of her drink.

"For someone who doesn't like it, you sure seem to end up married pretty often."

"Not again." 

There's a firmness there; she sets down her glass as she says it. They are on the couch in his office. She is in her bra and skirt, pouring herself another drink.

"Third time lucky?"

"Is that a proposal?" 

"Don't get ahead of yourself, Jordan."

-

She works for HBO until she doesn't and he retires and they keep at the affair, their irregular pattern of fucking for a space of five years. She worked for him once, they slept together once and in the course of a lifetime, that amounts to very little.

He doesn't think of her when it ends, not much and if, from time to time, he finds himself typing her name out on Google, checking up on what (on who) she's doing now, then well - that's just professional interest. Even Jack Rudolph is allowed that.


End file.
